Salt, starring Angelina Jolie, is a great many things but probably the thing it is the most is absolutely preposterous. The basic conceit of the story is so out there that if you can’t suspend your disbelief there you will be done. If you are able to just accept it and move on, you will find a competent action movie with interesting stunts and enough excitement to justify the ticket purchase. It really just depends on how much ridiculous bullshit you can tolerate.

Salt is a chase movie in the same general vein as Enemy of the State where basically you have your set up, some action, some twists, some action, some more twists, action and credits. It is the sort of movie where the story itself is a MacGuffin and serves only as a reason for Salt to be running and various incompetent government agents to be chasing. As long as the action and stunts are cool, the movie can still succeed even if the premise does not. This is the case with Salt.

The movie begins with Angelina Jolie’s Evelyn Salt having her ass pretty thoroughly kicked at  the hands of the North Koreans. She is insisting that she is not a spy and they are insisting she is with their fists. She is sprung through a prisoner transfer with the US and we find that she is in fact a CIA officer and her boyfriend wouldn’t stop until a deal was made for her return. The film jumps to years later as she and her now husband are about to celebrate their wedding anniversary. As she is about to leave, a Russian national shows up to defect to the US and give up some kind of intel on an upcoming terrorist attack. Salt’s boss, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), sends her in to question the guy while Winter and counter-terrorist Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) watch on. During the interview the Russian reveals that there is a secret spy program that has been going on for years in which the Russian government trains children to replace American children as sleeper agents who will eventually be activated as assassins just like Lee Harvey Oswald was. Yeah, they went there. As Salt is about to leave the Russian tells her that one such agent is going to assassinate the Russian president at the funeral for the American Vice-President. Then he tells her the agent’s name is Evelyn Salt. From there it is basically escapes, chases and headbutting people in cars while handcuffed.

Attempts are made to provide some twists in the story to make it more engaging and certainly the audience is meant to wonder what the truth is but the twists are telegraphed way too early and the out come is fairly obvious. About midway through I whispered to my friend what I thought was going on and I turned out to be exactly right. It is obvious because certain shots presented can only lead to one thing. Certain things characters do HAVE to lead toward a particular outcome otherwise the movie wouldn’t have bothered showing them and then not paying them off in other ways. Handled differently these twists could have made for a deeper experience but as it is they couldn’t have been more telegraphed if there were Pop Up Video like messages explaining what was going on. Luckily the action and performances step up and take your mind away from all of that.

Like just about all movies of this type, the action is far fetched and fairly unbelievable. Unlike recent movies of this type, like say Knight and Day, the action is not buffered with a bunch of CGI to really drive home just how ridiculous the things are that you are watching. The stunts are done by stunt people and are really cool to watch. The fight scenes are well choreographed and not over the top wire fu with extra digital effects touch ups. They are fast fights with realistic moves and executed with skill such that you believe Salt is really that badass if you are able to ignore that Angelina Jolie is so skeletal at this point her action looks like it was animated by Ray Harryhausen.

The performances are good across the board as well which really helps. Without any winks or nods to let the audience know that they understand this was all nonsense the characters have to buy into it completely. They do this with the gravitas of serious characters in a serious movie and it lends enough credibility to what is going on to maintain interest and continue to suspend disbelief.

Conclusion [7.0 out of 10]

Salt isn’t a great movie but it is a competent one. In a summer full of sequels and remakes it is nice to see one of the few that is original not completely suck. It is not for everyone, however, and if you have a low tolerance for outlandish plots and unlikely action then you are probably not going to find much to like here. If you are looking for an excuse to watch exciting action and can put up with the outlandish plot then you could do worse. If you are in the latter category then go to a bargain show, get a big tub of popcorn, shut your brain down and have a good time.